Out to own today:
X-Men: Apocalypse
 | “The weak have taken the Earth,” Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) What a disappointment from the previous highs of X2 and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. A significant dip in quality. No emotional heft. None of the interesting melancholy. A single decent sequence – Quicksilver (Evan Peters) briefly saving the day, to the soundtrack of the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’, at 3000 frames per second; though even that has poor visual effects and is an echo of a similar scene in the previous film. It typifies the constant déjà vu of superior moments in earlier chapters. [To read more, click here.] |
Desierto
 | “Welcome to the land of the free,” Sam (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) Immigration has been at the forefront of news stories throughout the last year. Then along comes a film from the ground. Instead of vitriolic rhetoric or kitchen sink wallowing, the filmmakers have fashioned a chase thriller as the vehicle for contemplation. Debate is perhaps far easier to swallow, in terms of cinema attendance, if an adrenaline rush surrounds it. And who doesn’t enjoy a lean 94-minute thriller? The problem here is not in the idea, but the execution. DESIERTO is Jonás Cuarón’s second feature. Being in the shadow of father Alfonso cannot be easy. Comparisons are immediately going to be made, and junior does not come off favourably. The opening and closing shots are anomalies, evidencing flair absent from the rest of the runtime. [To read more, click here.] |
Things to Come
 | “Anyway, after 40 women are fit for the trash,” Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) Director Mia Hansen-Løve, like Bruno Dumont, makes a good film every other one. Here, even with the mighty Isabelle Huppert taking up lead duties, Hansen-Løve’s latest is a disastrous mix of cod-intellectual pseudo-philosophical claptrap and tepid soap opera melodrama histrionics. THINGS TO COME is the sort of movie to give arthouse cinema a bad name; it is neither coruscating character study nor social cri de cœur; though maybe it is trying to be both – a double misstep. [To read more, click here.] |
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